The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

A few years ago, it was Europe that was being presented negatively by a large part of the French political elite: the euro was going to destroy jobs, and the loss of sovereignty would be terrible for the French economy. All of this was false. Today, we are looking for another devil – one who now has the face of globalization.

The French are trapped in the illusion that they are in no way responsible for their problems. Neither in the general nor in the particular. Responsibility is hell, therefore it is other people. The scapegoats have been refashioned over the years: Les “gros,” les “patrons” [the wealthy, bosses], les “puissances d'argent,” le “capitalisme”, “les Boches” [Germans] and “les deux cents familles” have given way to “globalization,” Maastricht Europe [the city where the EMU and the euro were agreed upon], to “elites.”